This was a really fun project to work on. Zach wanted to get a bike that could do fast group rides on the road, have disc brakes for his local technical descents, and have added capability for traveling off the smooth tarmac – but not feeling sluggish like some endurance or gravel bikes can be.

Done!

The overall weight of this bike is quite low, only 18.4 pounds as pictured, and that’s for a very tall bike. Zach opted for a 1 x drivetrain setup, using a lightweight Easton carbon crankset paired with a Shimano XT 11-42 cassette. Shimano has been slow to embrace 1x drivetrains – after enough nudging they did it for mountain bikes, but have not released a package for drop bar applications. A clever work around is to leverage the connectivity of their electronic Di2 drivetrains. This allows you to easily pair the Ultegra shifters to a XT mountain bike derailleur that is large enough to work with the wide range cassette. The lack of a second chain ring and front derailleur realize a small weight savings as well.

After Zach had upgraded the wheels on his last bike to a nice set of carbon hoops and felt the performance advantage, he knew he wanted to go that route on the new bike. It doesn’t get any better than these ENVE x Chris King wheels: low weight, aerodynamic, stable in cross winds, wide, tubeless, stiff under cornering loads and sprinting – while remaining comfortable. They are a real enhancement to the ride and performance of the bike.

For the finish we incorporated two colors of paint with polished, satin and color anodized titanium, all overlapping to create a visually interesting and complex design without being loud. The Chris King parts are in their upcoming new color “Matte Punch” (available starting in December). The matte finish on some of their newer colors works really well with the satin finish of titanium and the matte of the Enve parts. Coming up soon we will have Peter’s cross bike with “matte slate” parts from Chris King on his multi-finish titanium bike.